1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the invention relate generally to packaged integrated circuit devices and more particularly, but not exclusively, to mold compounds that mitigate warping in a package.
2. Background Art
Ultra-thin cores and coreless designs, which significantly reduce the vertical (z-height) profile of integrated circuit packages, are increasingly used in tablets and other mobile devices. Warpage is one significant challenge to the manufacture of these types of integrated circuit packages. Typically, stringent warpage specs are imposed so that ball-attach (BA), surface mount technology (SMT) or other assembly processing can be performed successfully.
Stiffener structures are sometimes added to a substrate to mitigate the possibility of warpage. However, the uses of such stiffeners can complicate processing or otherwise lead to increased costs. Moreover, such warpage mitigation is usually limited by properties of an adhesive which is used to bond the stiffener. Other techniques to mitigate warpages, such as over-molding or a molded underfill, are becoming less effective as successive generations of manufacturing technology continue to scale toward thinner packages. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for improved solutions to mitigate package warping, where such solutions can be applied to very thin package designs.